Leilene

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

If the only time you’ve seen an elephant is in a zoo, you’ve only seen the most devastated and abused specimens of this grand species. But even captive elephants are capable of sophisticated reasoning. One five- ton lady elephant, known as Bertha, was kept for years in the Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. She used to wake up her handler, Jenda Smaha, when it was time for a show by brushing her eyelashes against his cheek! Also, she had a clever way of getting at the sweets Jenda used in the show, but kept stored between times in a cabinet in Bertha’s house. Of course, Bertha was an enormously powerful animal, and could easily have smashed the cabinet to smithereens, and nabbed the goodies. But that, evidently, would have been too gross a strategy for a being of her subtlety. Instead, when a stranger would wander into the elephant house, Bertha would grab his arm with her trunk. You can imagine how this would startle just about anybody, so Bertha, sensitive as she was to others’ feelings, was just as gentle about it as she could be. But if her captive tried to pull away, she’d tighten her grip enough to let him know who was boss. Thus ensnared, the stranger would be guided to the cabinet where the sweets were stored. Then Bertha would place the person’s hand on the handle, and hope the human had enough intelligence to deduce what was wanted of him.
On one occasion, however, the cabinet was unexpectedly locked, and the poor woman in Bertha’s grasp didn’t know what to do. When Bertha let go of her, she made a beeline for the door, trying to get out of there as fast as possible, but trying at the same time not to move so quickly as to panic the “dumb beast.” Just before she could reach the door, however, there came a tap on her shoulder. Astonished, she turned around, and found herself staring at the great elephant. In her trunk, the elephant held the key to the cabinet, which she dropped carefully into the woman’s hand.49
Almost always, what is taken for rank stupidity on the part of animals turns out to be, instead, a lack of understanding on our human part. Ostriches, for example, are famed for stupidly sticking their heads in the sand when they want not to be seen. The truth of the matte; though, is that ostriches do not put their heads in the sand at all. When they sit on their massive eggs, their long necks and prominent heads make them a conspicuous and vulnerable target, visible to their enemies for miles. And so they have developed an ingenious and effective method of camouflaging themselves when they sense danger, but must remain on their eggs. By stretching their necks down and along the sand, they not only become less conspicuous, but also, from a distance, look very much like a small hill of sand.

There are so many instances in which animals have demonstrated profound intelligence that, frankly, I wonder sometimes about the intelligence of the people who insist that animals are dumb. Everyone has heard tales of dogs traveling great distances across unknown terrain to rejoin their people. What you might not know, however, is that many of these stories are documented, verified, and, incredible as they seem, literally true.
For example, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Martin moved from Des Moines to Denver. But their German shepherd, Max, evidently preferred Des Moines, because he went back on his own, a distance of 750 snow covered miles.
Another German shepherd, living in Italy, missed his human companion, who had recently moved from Brindisi to Milan and left the animal behind. It took the dog four months to cover the 745 miles, but he managed to do it and found his person to boot.
Even more remarkable is a shorter journey of “only” 200 miles, described by Sheila Burnford in her book The Incredible Journey. Three animals—an old English bull terrier, a young Labrador retriever, and believe it or not, a Siamese cat—stayed together, took care of each other, and found their way across 200 miles of rugged Canathan wilderness in Northwestern Ontario.4’
I would never have thought a cat capable of such a feat. But I was wrong. There are actually many documented and verified accounts of cats traveling great distances to be with their people. The longest I know of is also one of the best authenticated. It concerns a New York veterinarian who moved to a new job and house in California, and had to leave his cat behind, expecting to send for him later. But the cat disappeared prematurely, so the doctor understandably assumed he had seen the last of his cat. Five months later, however, the cat “calmly walked into the (new) house, and jumped onto its favorite armchair.” As you might imagine, the vet was startled. For a moment, he was so shocked he just stood there, gaping. Was this his cat? Then he remembered that his cat had once been in a bad fight, in which its tail had been bitten. The injury had left a distinct growth on the fourth vertebra of the cat’s tail. Remembering this, the vet walked over to the cat, and felt it’s tail. Sure enough, there, on the fourth vertebra, was the telltale growth!
We may surely be justified in considering the possibility that animals have access to a kind of intelligence beyond our comprehension. It is hard to attribute such accomplishments to mere instinct.

“Now we need to relate all this specifically to tire selection,” Spiegel says, continuing our conversation.
Tire upgrades are one of the most common changes a truck owner makes. But plenty of hunters and fishermen complain about poor performance after they install larger tires. Here again, gear ratios make an impact.
“As your deer-hunting friend learned the hard way, tire size can actually decrease the performance of the vehicleT Spiegel says. “A larger tire looks good, and it certainly has more flotation area and a greater gripping surface. Going to a wider tire isn’t a problem, but if you change the diameter of the tire, you are, in effect, altering the final drive ratio.You’ll need to change the gear in direct proportion to the tire size change. If the tire size goes up 10 percent, then you need to change the gear ratio by 10 percent.This way, you’ll maintain the same power of the vehicle. “So moving up to larger tires really does require a change in gears?” I ask.
“Absolutely. Going to a large tire is like trying to pull a boat up the ramp while in high gear. Putting on those large tires essentially has taken away low gear.”
Spiegel pauses, hoping no doubt to catch some small indication that I’ve grasped the basics of what he’s talking about.
“So, my buddy’s truck probably was geared too high for the kind of offmad driving he was doing,” I say. “And going to larger tires only made the problem worse. It’s like a double whammy.”
Spiegel beams. “Exactly”
“But the problem is also money, isn’t it? Gear changes aren’t cheap, and they really aren’t do-it-yourself jobs.”
“No on both counts;’ he says.
In fact, depending on exactly what is done, expect to pay between $1,000 to $2,000 for a gear change.That may be one reason why so many of us run for cover when we’re told the truck needs a gear change.
And, truth be told, we’re probably also prey to the Steak and Sizzle Paradox.We gladly pay for sizzle (macho tires), which can be seen by everyone, but foolishly draw the line at steak (the gears), which are tucked away out of sight.
Well, Spiegel showed me the liglmYou, too, If you want maximum performance out of your 4×4, pay for the steak as well as the sizzle.

What is the proper role for interactive multimedia technology in anthropological research, development and publication? The papers gathered at this web site endeavor to answer this question—a complex question, and one not easily answered. In the course of the one of the articles cited here, the author is wise to paraphrase Levi-Strauss, who always said we should to avoid the trap of thinking (or letting others think) that new technology is merely bien a manger (i.e. that the consumption of new technology is inherently good and brings its own inherent rewards). As the writer suggests, technology best serves the purposes as anthropologists when they realise it is also bien a penser. One item particularly worth reading here is Marcus Banks’s “Interactive multimedia and anthropology: a sceptical view.” Banks—a Reader in Social ft Cultural Anthropology and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge—has done more research and thinking on the role of multimedia in the teaching of anthropology than just about anyone else on the planet. His insights are invariably plentiful, hard-won, and pertinent. Banks argues, with justice, that interactive multimedia is bound, in the long run, to hurt more than help in the research and teaching of anthropology. As he says, all pure research is a linear, and thus bound to be corrupted (rather than enhanced) by invasive technology.

Cultural Survival, founded in 1972, is a recognized leader anibg educational and cultural organizations speaking out for the rights, voice and vision of indigenous peoples. Cultural Survival believes that indigenous peoples should be able to determine their own futures on their own lands (and on their own terms). Through its website and publications, student conferences and educational outreach, Cultural Survival draws attention to the issues confronting indigenous peoples, and promotes the cause of self-determination. Cultural Survival’s projects emphasize the need to build partnerships with and between indigenous peoples and their program serves as a means of pro-indigenous advocacy. Here at the web site. Cultural Survival provides important and, above all, carefully analyzed information concerned with reconciling economic development and human rights in an era of globalizing capitalism. Related topics of interest include the prospects for multiculturalism in pluriethnic societies This web site includes online indexes to Cultural Survival’s magazine, Cultural Survival Quarterly, along with reports on Cultural Surval events and projects, and in-depth articles on a range of topics, among them a fascinating piece on the Macuxi, Wapixana, IngarikO and Taurepang of Raposa-Serra do Sol in which an anthropologist documents the struggle of indigenous people to have their ancestral land protected—rather than despoiled—by the Brazilian government. Tune in here for the news corporate media is not likely to mention, let alone highlight.

When 9-year-old hockey player Alex Tapscott and his teammate Stephen Senders needed to solve a debate about their hero Wayne Gretzky, they interrupted Alex’s dad to get access to the Net. Dad took a break from his Mac, and two minutes later the boys had found an NHL server in hawaii containing a spec sheet on Gretzky They printed it with a color photo of their hero and the debate was settled. They were both right. When Dad asked Alex why he went to a server in Hawaii, Alex replied:
“We just thought it was so amazing that they would have information about hockey in Hawaii that we wanted to check it out.” Alex and Stephen—Net surfers. The new technology is penetrating our lives; much of this is happening through our children. Over one-quarter of American homes have a computer, but for many adults the machine is a mystery, or it is used for word processing, accounting, or home business applications. Children, on the other hand, are using machines for games, homework, communications, art, music, reference, and a host of emerging applications on the Internet. The average age of an Internet user is twenty-one and declining.
Such communications capacity doesn’t mean an end to infojunk. When telegraph wires were first strung between Texas and Maine in the nineteenth century, writer Henry Thoreau wondered if the two states really had anything constructive to communicate. Maybe, Thoreau said, the telegraph system was nothing more than an “improved means to an unimproved end.” Thoreau isn’t the only writer to twit new ideas. Columnist Dave Barry has had similar fun with the information highway, wondering whether or not the whole thing isn’t just “CB radio with more typing.”
But already software “agents,” or “knowbots,” are in the marketplace. They go out onto the Net to find the information you want. Rather than drowning in data, agents will provide the structure to form data into information and the context into which to translate information into knowledge. When you apply your own human judgment and transhistorical insights, knowledge can become wisdom. Chances are the Net will enable us to move up this chain rather than down.

Current Anthropology is a transnational journal devoted to research on humankind, encompassing the full range of anthropological scholarship on human cultures and on the human and other primate species. Communicating across the subfields, the journal features papers in a wide variety of areas, including social, cultural, and physical anthropology as well as ethnology and ethnohistory, archaeology and prehistory, folklore, and linguistics. Articles for the online edition are available as Full Text, Postscript, and PDF files—take your choice. Editions of the journal available online begin with Volume 40, number 5 (in other words, every edition since December 1999. Although this presently makes for a fairly limited digital backlist, all future editions of the journal will be published and archived on the web, so the library will quickly grow in weight and usefulness. Recent articles include “The Social Behavior of Chimpanzees and Bonobos:
Empirical Evidence and Shifting Assumptions,”“Cheating at Musical Chairs: Territoriality and Sedentism in an Evolutionary Context,”“The Distributional Approach: A New Way to Identify Marketplace Exchange in the Archaeological Record,” and “Sex, Sound Symbolism, and Sociolinguistics.” The site also includes listings and contact info for the editors and editorial board, details on how to submit articles for publication, and a handy searchable index items published in the journal.